Close Up (Jan-Jun 1928)

Page scan 000540 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000540
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Switzerland, Early Cinema, and Global Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
Library of Congress, MBRS, Moving Image Section
Sponsor:
Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
As an active film magazine, CLOSE UP lasted only a short time, from 1927 to 1933. Yet the legacy of this English-language periodical, which was published in Switzerland, continues to matter. Edited by Bryher and her husband Kenneth Macpherson, CLOSE UP became THE magazine for energetic debates about the nature of cinema and manifestos imagining new forms of filmmaking and spectatorship. The magazine published articles by filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein, and female literary modernists, such as H.D. and Gertrude Stein. As film scholar Anne Friedberg explains in the anthology CLOSE-UP, 1927-1933: CINEMA & MODERNISM, 'CLOSE UP became the model for a certain type of writing about film -- writing that was theoretically astute, politically incisive, critical of films that were simply 'entertainment.' For six and a half years, CLOSE UP maintained a forum for a broad variety of ideas about the cinema; it never advocated a single direction of development, but rather posed alternatives to existing modes of production, consumption, and film style.' Like Friedberg's own writing, CLOSE UP continues to be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of film and media theory. -- Eric Hoyt, 2014
Date Added:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP And yet the cultural film to-day is infinitely more important than the theatre or any other form of art, because its public is bigger and its influence is therefore stronger. In Germany alone sixty millions of cinemagoers sit in front of the screen each year. And the possibilities of harm which a bad film might do are appalling to contemplate. Unhappily the immense possibilities of the cinema are only too often cramped by an alarming artistic and intellectual poverty. As yet not half the millions of cinemagoers are in accord with what they see. What the worth-while film of to-day demands of them is real comprehension and real pleasure. Yet there is no lack of talented and able writers directors, actors, architects, cameramen and composers. But their talents and their ideas can but seldom come to fruition in the present condition of the film industry. On account of this the Peoples' Association for Film Art has the mission of collecting together these wide masses of cinemagoers and to educate them into critical perceptions. It can and it will convert the already uneasy cinema public to a state of positive criticism and furnish them with the influence that is necessary, if instead of ineffectual rubbish, living work is to be made. So any too aspiring experiments are hereby debarred. We know that the cinema will always be foremost a means of escape and amusement, but wre believe that amusement is not synonymous with trash and that escape has not the same significance as intellectual poverty. The Peoples' Association for Film Art does not limit its sphere to Berlin but is equally active in all the big and small 72